Feature Article

A World Bank-aided project on sodic land reclamation in Uttar Pradesh is being executed by U.P. Bhumi Sudhar Nigam, Lucknow, and Remote Sensing Applications Centre, U.P., Lucknow has the responsibility of sodic land mapping for the execution of land reclamation programme at the cadastral level.

This article highlights some aspects of pesticides contamination in foods and the Government of Nepal's experience in setting MRLs of pesticide on Food. Use of pesticides in agriculture crop has a great concern to all. According to the provision conferred by Food Law, Government of Nepal fixes MRLs of pesticide on food products.

Parking is an essential component of the transportation system. Parking management can significantly reduce the number of parking spaces required in a particular situation, providing a variety of economic, social and environmental benefits.

The paper traces the status of quality of life in India with particular reference to north-eastern states. It proposes a methodology to combine different dimensions of quality of life, such as income, education, health, employment and infrastructure, into Quality of Life Index (QLI) by applying Totally Fuzzy Analysis (TFA).

Field experiment was conducted at the Student's Research Farm, Department of Agronomy, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana during rabi 2005-06 to evaluate the feasibility of different weed management options in bed planted wheat.

A pot experiment was conducted to study the toxic effect of nematicides: carbofuran, carbosulfan alone and their combination on soil microbial population and soil respiration with cotton as a test crop. The total bacterial population and free living diazotrophs population was reduced initially by nematicides application.

Many rural people in Tajikistan cannot afford to regularly buy products like fuel and agrochemical inputs. Instead, they rely on locally available yet increasingly scarce natural resources. One result is that large amounts of animal dung are used as fuel for cooking and heating. Simple modifications of local cookstoves are supporting rural communities to use local resources more efficiently, in the process improving soil rehabilitation.

The sulphur content of diesel in India is 350 particles per million, twenty times that of the United States. Diesel exhaust is far more hazardous than petrol exhaust. Yet, diesel cars in Indian cities are rising with the association of automobile manufacturers pushing hard for it.

Potassium release kinetics was investigated in soils drawn from plots of a long term fertilizer experiment that had been receiving different rates of K. Non exchangeable K release was higher in soils that were receiving organic and inorganic fertilizers than the soils not dressed with K. The amount of non exchangeable K release was faster initially and it slowed down afterwards.

To help understand different viewpoints on the effectiveness of EM (Effective Micro-organism), LEISA asked two professionals for their opinion. Dr. Narayana Reddy is a prize-winning organic farmer (who made the transition from conventional agriculture in 1980), writer and trainer from Bangalore, India. Dr. Ken Giller is professor of Plant Production Systems at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, and has extensive experience in soil microbiology research with microbial inoculants.